Today in Brexitland, March 13, 2023

I think I’ve figured out what happened to Twitter’s algorithm last month

One of my subscribers messaged me asking if I had any thoughts on Twitter’s new algorithm and whether I had a view as to whether or not it favours right-wing content over other types of material, at least more than it used to. As it happens, I have some thoughts on this, so I thought I’d share them with everyone.

I need to preface this with the disclaimer that I am not a computer programmer. Or indeed, a person who is very technically adept, full stop. However, I think I have an insight into why the Twitter algorithm, very recently, has begun to act weird. I don’t have the full picture by any means, but I wanted to put this out there and see if anyone else can pick up on what my hypothesis states and perhaps even fill it out a little more.

I only have this insight because, thankfully as it happens, I have a large enough Twitter following to track the behaviour of the app in certain ways. And, at least for the time being, Elon Musk has allowed us all continued access to Twitter Analytics. That’s the only reason I have any ability at all to tell you a little of what might be going on here.

Any of you, by the way, again for now, can access Twitter Analytics. At the time of writing, if you go to the “More” tab on your Twitter account and then “Creator Studio”, you’ll find “Analytics”. This will break down your tweets into three categories of analysis: “Impressions”, “Engagements” and “Engagement Rate”. To briefly explain what each of these represent: “Impressions” are the number of times people have seen your tweet on Twitter. This is easily confused with “Engagements”, so don’t be - lots of people will have “seen” your tweet, it having appeared in their timeline, but what counts is “engagement”. What the “Engagements” number measures is how many times someone has interacted with your tweet in a meaningful sense, either liking it, retweeting it, replying to it or even just clicking on your tweet to have a further look.

“Engagement Rate” then, is simply the Impressions divided by the Engagements. For reference - and this will be important for when I get into how I think the algorithm has changed recently - a high engagement rate is 1% or more. Anything north of 3% is phenomenal; anything above 5% is extremely noteworthy.

I’ve had a high engagement rate on Twitter for a while now - usually around 4%. But since mid-February, when I believe the algorithm changed, that has gone up. It has gone up a lot. Just as my impressions have decreased. So, here’s what I think that means.